Douglas Carswell

Douglas Carswell was first elected to Parliament in 2005 by a slender 920 votes. He was returned as MP for Clacton in 2010 with a 12,000 majority. He is the author of The End of Politics and the Birth of iDemocracy and believes that the internet is making the world a vastly better place.

If I were a Scot, I'm not sure how I would vote this year

I’m not sure how I would vote in the Scottish referendum if I lived in Scotland.

On the one hand, I am a Unionist – literally, one side of my family having English roots (plus a bit of Welsh mixed in), and the other being Paisley Scots. There’s probably not a street on this island in which there are not similar family ties binding us together.

Harwich, in my part of Essex, boasts a magnificent bagpipe band, which regularly parades in kilts, testament to the large numbers of Scots that have settled in the area down the years.

It would be a shame if our two countries, which have achieved so many great things together, were to go our separate ways. Do we really want so many cousins, great aunts and grandparents to become foreigners?

And yet if I lived in Scotland I think I would want change.

The argument that Scotland is somehow “too small” to be a success is nonsense. Norway copes with self determination.

A staunch “localist”, I reckon if I lived in Scotland I’d be hyper sensitive to the idea of remote officials in London and Brussels making decisions on my behalf. I’d want Scottish concerns decided in Scotland – and I’d want those doing the decision making in Scotland to be made properly answerable to me in a way that they are currently not. A lot of devolution seems to have transfered decision making from one unaccountable elite in London to another in Edinburgh.

Most of all, I think I’d want financial autonomy, the Scottish government living within the Scottish tax base. Decades of fiscal dependence on London have had an enormous impact on Scotland and on the political economy north of the border. And not necessarily for the better.

Since Scottish taxpayers don’t have to pick up the tab, what is the rationale in anyone standing for office in Scotland offering voters a lower tax and spend alternative? And we wonder why Scottish politics has drifted ever further Left.

The land that produced Adam Smith now has a big, bloated, sclerotic state bureaucracy. I am not sure that that is a long term recipe for prosperity.

What Scotland needs is so-called devo max. Scotland should have complete control over tax and spending decisions. Offer that, and I suspect many voters tempted to vote for separation might just decide to vote to remain in the Union.